


Home

by jeta



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: CA:CW Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-24 11:09:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14354220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeta/pseuds/jeta
Summary: Steve breathed in the sweet, fresh, springtime air of upstate New York, staring up at the door he hadn’t walked through in two full years.Home again at last. It had taken them two full years, but they had finally made it back.The thing was, in the hurry just to get there, nobody had really stopped to consider until just now whether anyone else might already be there.





	1. Chapter 1

The lawns surrounding the Complex were still damp from that morning’s rain; the trees in the outlying wood lush bright green leaves and dying white blossoms for spring. The sun had just barely set, strewing vivid pink and orange and purple streaks in the sky. The air was cool but the wind was warm.

The Sokovia Accords had finally, officially been jettisoned yesterday. Politics, in the end, never could stand against the greater laws of Nature herself. And Nature seemed to want them all safely home.

Steve looked behind him at the others, who were piling out of the minivan cab they had taken from the airport. Wanda was biting a the side of her thumbnail. Bucky gave him an unenthusiastic thumbs-up. Sam copied Bucky (he’d been doing that lately), but with more vigor. Then there was Clint, and Scott Lang, and even King T’Challa, who had graciously taken the middle seat in the back of the cab. These were the five people on this planet who Steve could _unreservedly_ trust. Plus Vision, who had met Wanda for a romantic getaway over the weekend. He gave Steve an enthusiastic thumbs-up, much better than Bucky’s, but not quite as good as Sam’s.

“Let’s enter through the kitchen, shall we?” suggested Viz.

Steve shrugged and indicated Vision could lead the way. He was too lost in his thoughts to take point at the moment.

It was a miracle they had all made it. Simple things that everyone could finally take for granted again, like landing on American soil without getting arrested. Getting into a cab without fear of being recognized. Pulling off the road in upstate New York forty-five minutes later. It was really home. They were all together and they were all back safely. Nobody had thought they would live to see the day, much less the glass-walled Avengers Facility.

Steve breathed in the sweet, fresh, springtime air of upstate New York, staring up at the door he hadn’t walked through in two full years. Home again at last. It had taken them two full years, but they had finally made it back.

The thing was, in the hurry just to get there, nobody had really stopped to consider until just now whether anyone else might already be there.

 

*

 

Tony came back from the city earlier than planned. He ate a few bites of leftover sushi, then went upstairs napped for four hours, which was odd — practically a week’s worth of sleep, all in one go. He was astonished, frankly. When he shambled downstairs at quarter after eight in the evening for coffee and more sushi, it took him a few minutes to process that he really should have been listening to what FRIDAY had been funnelling into his ears for the past four minutes.

The thing about intruders. He should have listened to that.

An earlier version of himself would have been disturbed —  bordering on nail-spittingly angry — to enter his own kitchen, in his own house, which he had bought with his own money, and whose door he had _definitely_ locked as soon as he closed it behind him, and find it chock full of his ex-friends-and-teammates. His earlier self might have even freaked out in a substantial manner, and flung all sorts of backhanded compliments, open insults, and assorted appliances around in an effort to appear like he had everything under control.

But one thing he had learned in the time that had elapsed since he’d last seen any of these people in the flesh was that he had never had everything under control. At all. And it was horrible, and the world was infinitely worse off for it, but there it was, a standard fact.

Of course, he was still stunned and angry that they had just _broken in_. Like you would a cheap motel room or a car with keys you accidentally locked in the trunk. Breaking in was so… declasse. Even if there were former professional spies among the assembled —

 _No, not that word, thank you very much_ , screamed the extremely freaked-out part of his mind that he was currently trying his best to power down as quickly as possible.

Tony made his _I’m very impressed with myself_ facial expression, a tiny quirk of one eyebrow and a slight but genuine smile, because he really was quite impressed with himself at the moment. Maybe he had finally grown up. Well, that might be saying too much. But anyway, he made the face, which was just about the best thing he could have done in that situation, actually, because everyone in the kitchen was looking at him like they weren’t sure if they should just stab him and roast his innards over a nice bonfire, before he got to theirs first. 

They seemed to have a good amount of growing up still to do. He forced himself to keep his smile pasted on for another full second. The genuine-smile and the simulated one seemed to relax most of them ever so slightly.

All of this thinking and face-making and bonfire-pondering came and went in the space of about two seconds. Tony set his sushi container down on the island counter and made the agonizingly long trek to cross the room to the phone charger on the wall opposite. Of course his work phone had died on the car ride. Since he wasn’t driving the Spyder often anymore, he had stupidly, stupidly forgotten to bring a back-up charger with him. _Celebrities: they’re just like us._

He jammed the phone into the plug, still feeling the lasers of everyone’s eyes on his every move.  He wanted to keep his back to them as long as possible, so he drummed his fingers on the countertop and kept his eyes on the blank pane of glass of the window in front of him.

This was a bad call. He could see every pair of eyes staring at him in the reflection. He sort of sensed that they were all going to wait — for him to half-smile again, for him to say something.

For once in his life, he didn’t want to.

What joke would be appropriate here? What little deflection would address all of the tension in this room, the way people’s backs were stiff and their hands were lingering over their concealed weapons? Was there a joke here that could turn people who had been state enemies into friends, somehow? It seemed like all his old material had only ever done the opposite… There was nothing that came to mind. He felt completely empty.

So instead of speaking, Tony just kept drumming his fingers on the granite. He attempted a slight idle whistle, but it was — well, _unbearably awkward_ was the first thing that jumped to mind. That’s what he should say; call out the truth first, point out what everyone’s thinking — 

_Well, this is unbearably awkward_ …

It wasn’t right. Somehow. It was what the old Tony Stark would have said. But that Tony Stark didn’t exist anymore.

… So what should he say?

_Hi?_

Sounded stupid. Besides, why didn’t any of them say it first?

_Don’t everybody say hi at —_

_Don’t everybody thank me at —_

_Don’t worry about all the mud you just tracked in, it’s not like I just cleaned the floors or anyth—_

Everything was wrong. There was nothing good to say. But he had to say something, didn’t he?

Or did he. Maybe he could just stare at the wall until his phone rebooted, and then he could just stare at his phone until they all drifted out, if they all drifted out — if they were even really there? Could it be he was hallucinating? No. No way. He was past all that. His therapist had forced him to kick the habit at last. Hm. What would his therapist say, about this, if he were here?

That triggered instructions at last: _use phone_.

He stopped drumming his fingers and picked it up, placed the call.

“Yeah,” he said as the greeting ended. His voice sounded weird and tinny, like it was echoing through an empty canyon. Every eye was fixed on him, so he closed his own, shifted slightly, and pressed a palm against the cabinet in front of his face…

“You know where we are. I’ll leave the gate unlocked. Bring plenty of back-up this time. More than that. No. More. _Way_ more than that. Look, just bring whatever reinforcements you think you need, but don’t bring a war-party or anything. This is strictly confidential. I shouldn’t have to remind you of that. If there’s any teeny tiny slowly dripping faucet of a leak, it’s coming out of your holiday bonus. Ok. ok. See you soon.”

They had all tensed at the sound of his voice. Even with his eyes closed, he could still tell. He wasn’t going to be a coward, though. He forced his eyes back open. He hung up the phone. He turned around.

_Welcome home._

That was what he should have said.

_Welcome home._

The phrase bloomed in his mind as it died in his mouth; the sentiment was there for only a fraction of a second. The sight of the them staring at his reflection wasn't what killed it stone-dead; it was catching sight of the emotion in the eyes of his own reflection.

Anger. Huh. He hadn't thought he still had any left. He took a pause, drew in a long breath, and released his anger, like he'd been taught --

But his anger stuck. Right there in his chest. It was like it was glued into him, and he couldn't disengage.

Well, okay. He didn't mind anger. 

Actually, he could work with that.

 


	2. Trust

Tony turned around to lean against the kitchen counter, cleared his throat, and said to no one in particular, least of all anyone named Steven Rogers,

“I already had F.R.I.D.A.Y. seal the exits, so please don’t try to, you know, go anywhere. I know that makes it sound a lot like I’m kidnapping you, but technically it’s not. Let me repeat: I am not kidnapping anyone, since for tax purposes, you all still live here. At least as far as the U.S. Census Bureau knows.”

After his little speech, there was a pause just long enough to put the same amount of nausea in Tony’s stomachs that he’d have acquired riding the tilt-a-whirl at Coney Island for an hour straight.

He kept his eyes trained on the floor tile three feet in front of his toes, literally biting his tongue between his teeth. Just lightly. Just the tip of it. His fingers were trembling, like the ten little idiot traitors they always became, whenever his nerves flared up. No, _anger_ , he corrected himself -- not nerves. He didn't deal well with nerves. Never had. But anger, anger he could deal with -- 

He hid his balling fingers in the pockets of his sweatpants, resisting the Hulk-strong urge to straighten his plain black tee shirt and run his fingers through his hair; he affixed his stare on the floor tile, and waited.

It felt like it might actually kill him.

Huh. Kidnappings, terrorists waterboarding, aliens invading, not to mention being beaten to a pulp by all manner of adversaries, including two of the men currently standing across the kitchen from him -- and all manner of avenging, and _small talk_ felt like the thing that was going to kill him?

Tony squared his shoulders. 

He would wait.

 

*

 

And then somebody else finally broke the silence. 

“It’s still kidnap even if you’re held hostage in your own home,” said that dumb old scumbag, Hawkeye.

Of course he would be the first to break the  _ nobody talk to Tony Stark _ rule they’d all been cleaving with all their considerable collective strength to for the last few minutes. And years. Hawkeye had always been totally delusional about what counted as interesting legal information, and Tony was about to tell him so to his face — 

Nah. Tony had grown and all that, but he just couldn’t quite look the dude in his face. That was too… that would be… 

Tony didn't trust himself to speak, so he grabbed a small apricot from the fruit stand on the left of the sink, and chucked it at Hawkeye’s arm instead of finishing the thought. 

Hawkeye caught it deftly, and threw it right back. 

Tony caught it and threw it at Hawkeye’s head; Hawkeye caught it and threw it back, and this time Tony dropped it. It all happened in about two seconds. Two seconds of idiotically playing catch, like children, and the nausea evaporated. 

Against his will, Tony almost smiled. He kicked the apricot across the tile. 

“You know, you’re a total — “ 

As Tony kicked the apricot back across the long kitchen toward Hawkeye, the milliseconds started compounding and the nausea flared back to its previous sky high level and all the words just sort of dropped away and the moment froze and everything got weird again. 

_ Scumbag. Dirtbag. Dweeb. Douche-wagon.  _

_ You’re a total dick.  _

_ You’re an idiot, asshole, bastard, dastard, a dastardly son of a bitch.  _

_ You’re suuuuch a little bitch. _

Those were the words that came to mind, but those kinds of words were traded between — between comrades, between teammates. Between...well, friends. 

And these people — they were all frozen wax statues, some failing artist’s failed rendering of the real thing; they were mere representations of his old team-mates and comrades and -- or, well, even if they weren't  _literally_ made of wax, they might as well have been.

All of them except for stupid Hawkeye, who caught the apricot under the heel of his boot and smushed it against the tile.

“Ha ha,” Hawkeye crowed softly to himself. “Now I am lord and master of this apricot. Now and for all time.”

“You’re such a dick,” Tony said, trying but also failing to fight off the spiderweb-light smile creases he knew were threatening to appear on his face. “You are being a total dick to that poor, helpless piece of produce right now, and what did it ever even do to you.”

“Made you swear, though,” Hawkeye returned immediately, with a proud smirk. 

“Because  _ that’s _ incredibly hard.”

“That’s what she said,” they both intoned at the exact same time. Tony threw another apricot, and Clint caught it, and leaned back against his side of the kitchen counter, and took a bite. _  Don’t overthink it, old buddy old pal _ , the warm grin slowly creeping into Clint's eyes said.  _ Don’t keep making it weird, not when we just barely got back.  _

It  _ was  _ weird, however. It was all so, so weird; it was weird because bantering with the team — with the gang — with the former — ( _ oh WHATEVER  _ , the  _ team _ ) — it was perfect, and natural, and sorely-missed, and badly-needed; it was weird because Tony was actually smiling, all the way, his real smile, which he hadn’t planned on doing all night, especially not when he had entered the kitchen and had all his Friday-Night-alone-with-FRIDAY plans fouled up so unexpectedly. It was weird because Hawkeye —  _ well, come on, Tony, face facts _ — because _ Clint _ was also smiling, all the way,  _ his  _ real smile, and Tony knew Clint well enough to know that Clint almost certainly hadn’t planned on that happening either; it was weird because he knew the two of them were nowhere near done fighting with each other, that they would both want to take up endless pedantic and silly and prudent and stubborn and piercing and stale and frankly very pathetic arguments with each other later on, about who had been right and who had been wrong about it tall, and it was weird because Tony was actually already looking forward to it. Genuinely hoping they could get right down to it. Get cozily inebriated on the couch, like old times, and just get right down to it, and get right into it, and then get right over it already.

It was weird. Yes. But weird, Tony could work with.

But just as he realized that key piece of information, the number one reason why this whole situation was extremely, awkwardly, painfully weird, was because no one else in the kitchen had joined in with their banter. Not even by simply altering their facial expression. 

Not one other person.

The smile slid quickly from Tony’s face, and slowly from Clint’s — from Hawkeye’s. 


	3. Fear

 

And it was extremely, awkwardly, painfully weird, for the number one reason that no one else in the kitchen had joined in with their banter. Not even by simply altering their facial expression. Not one other person.

The smile slid quickly from Tony’s face, and slowly from Clint’s — from Hawkeye’s. 

“This is super, duper weird,” said Hawkeye abruptly.

“ _ Oh my god, I was just going to say that _ ” (or some variation thereupon), said several other voices, Tony’s among them. But also Sam. Wanda. And unless Tony was mistaken, also the King of Wakanda.

This just got weirder and weirder. 

Tony grabbed himself an orange from the fruit basket, edged his thumbnail into the skin, and took his sweet time starting to peel the rind. In between, he glanced around at everyone in turn — 

Wanda, in overalls and a cropped white tee shirt, pausing in mid-bite of her thumbnail. Tony’s gaze didn’t linger.

Vision. Smiling serenely. First genuine smile Tony had seen on him for two years. Wanda’s fingers that weren’t around her mouth were curled gently around his wrist. Clearly Vision was having the best day of his whole damn life. Wanda had no idea the effect she had on him. 

Sam Wilson, in the nearest corner by the fridge, wearing combat fatigues for some reason, and avoiding Tony’s eyes, which was the first Tony had ever seen him avoid anyone or anything at all. 

Scott Lang, who had gone tiny moments after Tony entered the kitchen, because clearly he was too chickenshit for this level of awkward, but Tony could see him scrambling around on the counter by Sam, and hear a tiny high-pitched buzz of sound that must have meant he was talking to himself. Or possibly singing. Tony had to smother the impulse to squash him like a bug.

T'challa, in the length-wise corner, a tiny smile in the corner of his mouth, the most un-annoying one in the group. He was wearing the same dark gray suit over a crimson cashmere sweater he had been wearing when Tony had seen him that morning at the U.N. He was already helping himself to the Starkpad Tony had left out on the counter earlier, scanning through the headlines for bad press, from the looks of it. Wakanda had been the first country in the U.N. to press for a vote to dissolve the Accords. That was six months ago, but T’Challa;s actions had finally, finally born fruit this morning. Must feel good, having months and months of stress and anxiety ending in one single vote, instead of it being the opening chapter of another fresh hell.

Then there were the last two ex-Avengers, clumped over in the diagonal corner nearest the exit.

Barnes...

And Steve.

“You didn’t call the cops on us, did you?” asked Sam in a rough, unforgiving voice, startling everybody. 

Tony looked around, at everyone, this time without hiding his state behind his orange-peeling. 

“No,” he replied. 

“That’s exactly what someone who  _ did  _ call the cops would say,” pointed out Hawkeye. 

“ _ Squirrel yeb yub chitter chatter _ ,” said Scott in a hilariously tiny voice.

“Mr. Lang, no one can understand you when you get like that,” said T’Challa dryly without looking up from his Starkpad.

“I believe he wanted to restate that the Accords are dissolved,” Vision said, with evident satisfaction in his voice. “And while we’re discussing it, I would like to add that unless I am greatly mistaken, Mr. Stark has no incentive to bring police attention to your presence here, not that such attention would result in detainment at any rate.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” said Wanda, in her lilting Sokovian accent.

Wanda — Tony risked a quick, nervous glance her way, hoping to catch her and Vision in the act of flirtation (hey, it wasn’t every day your android pseudo-child fell in love and started acting like a 1950s-era sitcom around his crush), but Wanda wasn’t looking at Vision. 

She was smiling tremulously at  _ him _ , at Tony, like a kid would, like Harley did when he forgot to put up his I’m-too-cool-to-behave-like-a-normal-kid front, like how Peter still did on a near-daily basis when they ran missions together.

And no, Tony  _ hadn’t  _ realized until just that very moment that he had actually missed this desperate-to-make-them-all-proud little edgelord of a young woman. Even if she did have that whole stupid mind control thing that he hated. And the stupidly annoying nail-biting thing. Nor was he ready to admit even to himself just how badly he had missed her, when it wasn’t like they had ever been bosom buddies to begin with. Just occasional housemates. They had been on all of two ops together, besides for Sokovia itself, if he remembered correctly. One of which she had saved his life during, although Tony had paid her back for it the next time. But those weren’t her only annoying habits. When he was here, she was always strumming that damn guitar, like some boho hippie from San Francisco. 

(“ _ She only plays it when you’re around, you know,”  _ Steve had once told him. “ _ Something about how she likes using your hyperverbal complaining as an accompaniment, rather than shanghai Sam into singing, again… _ ).

The memories were too sharp; they cut at the inside of his head. Tony put them on mute until they squished down and congealed into an angry mush, working all through his gut, making the sushi and the bite of orange tussle uncomfortably for space.

_ Stay cool, Tony _ , he ordered himself. He had known ever since the Accords cleared, (ever since he and Rhodes had helped Great Britain, South Korea, and Mexico see the  _ bigger picture _ so that they  _ would  _ clear), that this reunion was due. He had expected it in a month, maybe two. Not that very day. But he’d be damned if he was going to go running from the room to puke his anxiety out of his system, or hyperventilate as he paced his bedroom in tight circles, or rush down to the garage to hammer away at the nearest piece of beatable iron…  

_ No _ . Not gonna take the easy way out. Not this time. No panic attacks. No radioactive Tony Stark freak-out. He had worked  _ way  _ too hard in therapy to revert to any of that crap now. 

So he had to do the unthinkable, and face his damn emotions. Right there. Now. 

He started by glancing over at Wanda again. 

She was humming three or four notes, tunelessly, her eyes on the sunset out the window. Everybody else was just… waiting for Tony to make the next move, he presumed.

_ What’s my move, JARVIS,  _ Tony thought at Vision.

Vision smiled blandly. 

Tony’s face twitched as his gaze went back to Wanda. He tried hard to piece it together for himself, but he still couldn’t have explained why. Why he had missed her. Why he wanted her to look at him with that smile, or just look at him at all. After all, she  _ had  _ thrown a car on him. And she was  _ still  _ biting her matte black nails, for god’s sake, even  _ now _ , in his presence, a habit that she  _ knew  _ sent him up the wall and that he had always chewed her out for before, at freaking length, because it was that annoying — 

And then it finally occurred to him, brilliant genius that he was, that yeah, she was probably doing it  _ because  _ it drove him nuts, and just for a split second, he forgot that his own company had manufactured the bomb that killed her parents, and that her twin brother had gotten killed cleaning up  _ Tony’s  _ Ultron mess, and for that split second of freedom he just suddenly  _ liked _ that she was there. In his kitchen. In  _ their  _ kitchen. That they were all there —

And maybe, maybe, maybe,  _ maybe  _ things could go back to normal, eventually — 

Except, of course, they were  _ all  _ there. The two people who hadn’t said anything yet — those two were — he couldn’t help but hope that —

No. 

It was hopeless. It was never going to go back to normal between them. Twenty feet, but it might as well have been a million miles. Steve was never going to even  _ look _ at him again.

Tony almost dropped his orange right there on the tile. He was sweating, not a lot, but he could feel it on the back of his neck and under his tee shirt. 

He could feel it just like he could feel himself flaring right back into self-protective mode. He had to fight it. If he for one second raised walls here, in his own kitchen, then — he felt sure he would never see any of their faces ever again. And he hadn’t known it half hour before, but he was now perfectly aware of how terrifying that prospect was. It made his stomach drop just thinking about it.

He made himself concentrate on not dropping the orange, instead.  _ Don’t fuck this up, Tony; don’t freak them out. Don’t let any of them leave, not a single one, no matter what it takes, even if they hate you for it  _ — 

( _ “I can’t PROTECT you out there!” _ he heard himself yell at Pepper, years ago, freaking her out, hard core, causing one of his patented Tony Stark emotional messes.  _ “I have to protect the one thing I can’t live without—” _ ) 

_ Be cool, Tony, but don’t let them leave here again, even if they end up hating you for —  _

Which was why he was thrown completely off balance when someone jumped into him, wrapping him in a terrible, frightening, clumsy hug. 

The orange slipped from his grip and went rolling across the floor.


	4. Risk

Somebody was hugging him.

  
It took all of Tony’s years of practice from JARVIS’ myriad Anti-Anxiety 101 exercises to keep Tony from pushing Wanda’s head and body away from him with all the blunt force his palms could deliver. He stood rigid as his heart raced in painful spasms in his chest. She’s hugging you, you idiot, his brain reminded him. Stop freaking out; give her a hug back. It’s what nice people do — well, not so much the Europeans, but it’s what nice Americans do —

(Ugh, the A-word.)

He pushed Wanda away, not hard, but away — he disguised it in a firm and patronizing pat of her hair. He wanted to feel good about her sudden move; he wanted to believe it might possibly have been born of real affection, her real desire to show him she had missed him, that she cared —  
But this was Wanda we were talking about.

( _You could have saved us_ — )

Recalling the future she had shown him once made him stop patting her head, which was good, because that had been weird. He crossed his arms over his nauseated stomach, then abruptly stopped doing that also.

Wanda just stood there and took it, playing it nonchalant and cool, trying to pretend she was still smiling for real, but looking all puppy-dog sad-eyes if you squinted, and Tony had done that. He had put that hurt there. And so what. He was just Tony Stark, after all, just one person who made mistakes, just like anyone else. He was still just Tony Stark, the genius mighty superhero and what not, and since when did any of that mean he couldn’t hug people, even if they might still throw a car on him when he was most vulnerable — ?  
He made his decision with his eyes almost closed, crossing the foot of distance he had put between himself and Wanda, and enveloping her in the patented no-holds-barred Stark bear-hug he had learned from Maria, all those many, many years ago, when his age was in the single digits and his world was her whole happiness. He really didn’t want to think of Maria right now. Not when the man who killed her was standing twenty feet away, except how could he not think of her, when the girl who was the only even ball-park close approximation of a daughter to him was standing there looking all sad and hurt, and he could fix it with just one moment of ignoring an impossible-to-ignore fear?

Maybe she would hurt him again. Maybe she wouldn’t. He had to be brave enough to care, and not to care.

He held her there, cushioned against his chest, close, so that her face was pressed next to the metal casing that Pepper always complained about, the one the doctors had installed in him two years back, to keep his sternum and half his ribs in place after the “incident” in Siberia. Without the arc reactor there to support his misshapen bones, his chest had basically caved in after Cap’s shield went into him. The memory was a very unwelcome intrusion. He felt Wanda feel him flinch, just thinking about it.

So he hugged her harder. Tried thinking of Rhodey, and Pepper, and Dum-E, and all the other people and robots who Tony found it easy to bear hug. Tried to imagine what any of them would say if they saw him here, trying his damndest not to sprint out of the room and just barely winning the battle.

Wanda tensed, and then relaxed.

He felt her fingers uncurl, to press against the back of his head so she could investigate what was going on in his mind; he felt her flinch hard against his sturdy, instinctive GET OUT, and he hugged her a little more warmly by way of apology, and he wondered for a fleeting moment if she was going to say something to the others about it.  
She didn’t. She curled her broken nails into his back and actually pressed her face closer to his chest. He wrapped his arms closer around her, keeping her steady and safe while she swayed slightly. Fidgeted a bit. It couldn’t have been comfortable, having your cheek smashed against the titanium under his skin like that. But she wasn’t complaining, unless the strange wetness on Tony’s tee shirt when they separated were her tears of complaint.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” she said generically. “And thank you for taking care of Viz while I was gone,” she added softly, leaning up to plant a kiss on Tony’s cheek. As though they were the only two people in the room. As though she had nothing specific to apologize for, or he had nothing to say about the —

No. Blame and shouting would solve nothing. That was another thing Tony had learned. In therapy, as a matter of fact.

“I feel like I should clarify, he didn’t really need much taking care of. The man doesn’t even eat, as far as I know. All I had to do was lose to him in chess twice a week.”

“I do eat,” said Vision. “And I lost to you on four occasions.”

“In two and a half years,” Tony pointed out. “That makes me, what, 4 for 120, roughly?”

“Plus seven draws.”

“But who’s keeping score.”

“I am going to make tea,” the girl said with a swiftly hidden smile. “For everyone,” she added, bringing all the others back into focus for them both. Tony looked up, already certain what he had to do next.

“That’s good, because I really think I should clarify,” he said to everyone, but again it was Wanda who responded first:

“Clarify what, exactly?”

“...How about everything?”


End file.
